


I Will, I Will

by PoppyAlexander



Series: Dawn Before the Rest of the World [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: All The Stories In This Series Have Crying, Anal Fingering, Backstory, Bit Of Crying, Brief Description of War Violence, Comprising What You Wonder?, Fluff and Mush, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Kissing, M/M, Oh Yes We Finish Our Fluffy Wedding Fic With Smut, References to Abuse, Romantic Fluff, Smut You Say?, Weddings, World War I, and let's not forget, butler!sherlock, gardener!John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 19:34:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2744489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wedding bells are ringing at the church on the hill! The past is recalled, the future is dreamed of, and promises are made.</p><p>AU-Stonefield Hall, 1920s Stately Home. Butler!Sherlock/Gardener!John</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will, I Will

The road was dry enough that the Albatros’s tires were kicking up dust as they bumped along toward Molly’s parents’ little bugalow, at the edge of the property belonging to Woolrich Heath House. John drove—he’d driven trucks a bit during the war; Sherlock rode beside him, trying to remain dignified and not hit his head on the interior of the roof; and young Margaret, with her shawl draped to cover her hair and blouse to protect them from the grit churned up from the road, hung on for dear life in the back. Piled up beside her on the seat, and in a wooden crate on the floor, were an almost vulgar amount of roses, carnations, African lilies, and thistle-branches.

“Watson, you drive like an absolute scoundrel. Are you sure you learned in the army and not as a get-away driver for a gang of criminals?”

John laughed and leaned forward a bit, as if he could push the car to move faster just by showing it where to go. “It was you, made us late,” he replied, shouting to be heard over the noise of the engine. “Anyway, we’re nearly there.”

Sherlock fished out his pocket watch. “Miss Hooper is going to think we’ve abandoned her.”

“What, in her hour of need?” John smirked. “It’s her wedding day; I’m sure she’s got other things to occupy her than wondering why we’re ten minutes late.”

“We are _twelve_ minutes late. Drive as if young Margaret had just robbed a jeweler.”

John turned his face toward Sherlock’s, smiled with half his mouth. “Yes, Mr Holmes.”

Margaret piped up then with an exuberant trill not usually present in her voice. “I know it’s Miss Hooper’s wedding, but still—this is the most exciting day of my life!”

John agreed that a special occasion like a wedding was exciting, indeed. Sherlock frowned at his watch.

“Mind those roses aren’t getting bruised, Margaret.”

“Yes, sir.” She giggled, and Sherlock frowned harder. Then Margaret squealed, “Oh! There’s a cottage—is that it?”

“Certainly is,” John affirmed, and steered the auto down an even rougher dirt track toward a tidy yellow house shaded by massive elm trees that must have been ancient.

“Do you suppose Miss Hooper’s father even has a decent suit?” Sherlock mused, eyebrows sliding down and toward each other.

“ _Holmes_ ,” John scolded, and shook his head.

“Of course he does,” Sherlock corrected himself. “Of course he does.”

Molly emerged from the front door of the little house, then, shielding her eyes from the sun, wearing a tea-length linen dress the colour of the white-blue sky, which she had spent hours intricately embroidering with blue and white daisies around the neck and the bottom of the skirt. There were buttons down the back, and the sleeves left her slender forearms bare; her long hair was softly rolled at the back of her neck. She waved to them as they disembarked from the car, smiling brightly.

Sherlock was all business, quickly brushing dust from the front of his coat and then immediately going into the back of the car for the flowers. John spared a, “You look absolutely lovely,” before walking around to help Sherlock.

“One assumes you have vases or bowls for the bouquets on the breakfast tables,” Sherlock intoned as he brushed past Molly into the house. He did not wait for an answer.

“Oh dear,” Molly said as John paused beside her. “He sounds even more wound up than my mother. She’s been baking for three days.”

“It’s his way of showing he cares, all this Holmesian efficiency,” John assured her. “It’s a bit roughshod,” he added, sounding apologetic.

“It’s fine,” Molly smiled. “I know him.”

Margaret grasped Molly’s hand and looked her over from head to foot. “Oh, Miss Hooper!” she gushed. “Look at your beautiful dress!”

“It was only ready in time thanks to your help,” Molly replied. “Come inside, I’ve something for you.”

Margaret followed Molly through the foyer to the back of the house, to the little bedroom that had once been hers. Everything was old and slightly worn, but neat and free of dust. Molly lifted a slim, rectangular package from the nightstand; it was wrapped in a square of dark green cotton fabric printed with delicate daisy chains, and tied with a length of ivory satin ribbon.

“Because you’ve been so helpful these past few weeks, helping me make my dress, and pack my trunk,” Molly began, and her eyes filled, but she quickly swiped her lower lids with the tips of her fingers. “And because I’ll miss you so much.”

Margaret became weepy at this, but Molly gave her an encouraging grin and she untied the ribbon, peeled away the fabric. Inside was a book, _Emily of New Moon_ , by Lucy Maud Montgomery, who had also written Margaret’s favourite, _Ann of Green Gables_.

“It’s about an orphan girl in Canada,” Molly said. “I hope you’ll like it.”

*

**_Margaret and the Sisters_ **

There were five of them, all girls, one after the next; their mother liked to say she’d been nursing babies longer than she’d done any one thing in all her life. They all had the first name Mary, but were called by their second names: Jane, Elizabeth, Anne, Catherine, and Margaret. By the end of 1918, when the flu came and ravaged every city, farm, and village, Margaret was a motherless daughter, a sister without sisters. She felt more an orphan from the loss of her precious sisters than she did even for having no mother. Margaret at eight years old spent a few weeks wondering how she could possibly manage the household and her father, the groom at Pelham, who had taken to drink and then later to his bed. One day he put off his first belt of the morning long enough to open the door for an elderly nun with a fat, dour face who didn’t even acknowledge Margaret. After serving them tea and cake, Margaret tried to listen through the door. Inside of an hour, the nun was shoving all her sisters’ dresses into a trunk (Margaret would grow into them eventually, what a lucky girl to have so many dresses when most girls had only two). Margaret’s father didn’t kiss her, or even say goodbye. By summer he was dead, too.

The Sisters of Holy Mercy convent was quiet—oppressive and somber, though, rather than comfortably contemplative—and Margaret was put to work scrubbing and dusting and mopping, and in four years she did grow into all but Jane’s dresses. Some of the sisters were kind, one young one was a bit of a joker, but most were quite old and either snapped at Margaret or shamed her for things she hadn’t even thought, let alone done. Sister Joseph was always pleasant to Margaret, though, and in what little free time Margaret had, Sister Joseph helped her with reading, writing, and sums. Mostly she read the Bible, but there was a small library with other books (most on religious themes, most heavy and boring). When Margaret was eleven, a parishioner left a box of books and children’s clothes on the doorstep for the sisters to dole out on charity visits to troubled families, and Sister Joseph liberated a few of the books for Margaret. Two _Oz_ books by L Frank Baum; Virginia Woolf’s _Kew Gardens_ , and _The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel_ by Baroness Emma Orczy.

Margaret read them over and over, by the dim light of her little lamp, in her bed after supper. Sister Mary Paul, the fat-faced nun who had claimed her, told her that reading was a waste of time, she was made for a life of housework, and what good would it do a scullery maid to read books that only tempted her to covet the lives of others? Not to mention that no one wanted a servant in his house with aspirations above her station. Margaret imagined that one day she would write a book of her own, maybe several books, and while she did not dare write them down for fear the sisters would humiliate her for wasting time she could be spending usefully, in service of the lord, she kept her stories safe inside her own head.

Shortly after she turned twelve, with no fanfare and few tender words from any of the sisters, Margaret’s few remaining dresses were packed into her trunk, and off she went to Stonefield Hall. So concerned was she that someone would feel she was a show-off or a snob, or that she was putting on airs, it was well over six months before she let on to anyone that she even knew how to read.

*

The walk to the church was up the dirt track, then along the main road to the end of the rye field, then up a hill past the vicarage (soon to be Molly’s new home) with its vast vegetable garden, to the little stone church. The church served four estates: Woolrich Heath House, where Molly’s parents lived and worked; what was left of Pelham, to the North; Briarcliff, the largest of the four, where John’s sister and her husband were installed as lady’s companion and groundskeeper; and Stonefield Hall. Molly’s parents walked at the front of the group with the bride, along with Margaret and two other young women of Molly’s acquaintance serving as her bridal party, and there followed an assortment of cousins, aunties, uncles, and friends of the family—including most of the servants of Woolrich Heath, who had known Molly since she was a girl.

The bride and her ladies carried bouquets of blowsy white roses generously donated to the cause of prettifying the wedding by the lady of Stonefield Hall, sprays of white and palest-pink carnations, and the tiny stars of African lilies in shades from white to pale blue—all of them arranged and tied with satin ribbons around their stems by John Watson, under the critical eye of Sherlock Holmes. The men of the party wore rose-and-thistle buttonholes, and the group chattered excitedly and jested and laughed as they walked. Molly wore her sturdy, everyday shoes for the trek and carried her white wedding shoes, which would hereafter be worn only on the most important Sundays at the church. There were children scurrying in and out between the adults, racing to the head of the line, veering off the path to investigate downed fence posts or chase butterflies, and the lot of them made a cheerful racket in the cool sunlit morning. Sherlock and John walked together near the back of the pack.

“She’ll have an even more demanding task ahead,” Sherlock mused. “Wife of the vicar. Running her household and exemplifying the feminine ideal for the whole flock—hostess, helpmeet, and—“ the last bit he added in an exaggeratedly ominous tone, “— _organizer of charity bake sales_.”

John grinned. “She’s up to it, I think.” He knew, of course, that Sherlock’s casual chiding of Molly was merely his defense against melancholy in the face of her leaving Stonefield for good.

“Well done, with the—“ Sherlock waved his hand elegantly, dismissively, in front of his chest. “The nosegays.”

“Thank you, Mr Holmes.” John smiled and watched the ground in front of their feet as they walked. “Least I could do for a friend.”

They walked for a while without speaking; John listened to the musical trill and bubble of the young women’s voices up ahead.

“He seems a solid fellow,” Sherlock ventured at last. “The new vicar.”

“Yes,” John agreed. “I understand he was an army chaplain.”

Sherlock and John had met Miss Hooper’s soon-to-be-husband, the new vicar Andrew Harper, only a few times; the romance had been a bit of a whirlwind as it was only three months since he’d arrived and Molly had begun staying after Sunday services to polish the pews and sweep the sanctuary floor. Everyone for miles called him “the new vicar,” and given the glacial pace of change in the county, surely he would still be known that way when he was eighty. Harper was then thirty-four years of age, indeed had been an army chaplain, and had a thick head of watery-brown hair and friendly eyes. He seemed the right balance of compassionate and wise for the post he held, and Molly clearly adored him. Her feet hadn’t touched the ground since she’d announced their engagement the previous month.

Sherlock dabbed at his upper lip with his handkerchief and then began to refold it. “I did get the distinct impression, though, that he is probably—“

“ _Uht_!” John said, and held up his hand, cutting off Sherlock’s words before he got them out. John shook his head, smiled conspiratorially. “I don’t disagree,” he said quietly, “But I also don’t doubt the sincerity of his affection for her.” In an even lower voice, John reminded, “I was married once, too.”

Sherlock only hummed, but John caught the hint of a grin. “I’ve known Miss Hooper a long time,” he said at last. “I suppose it follows that she should marry a man like him.”

*

**_Molly and Her Men_ **

When Molly was quite little, only just turned ten, she had her first crush on the gentle, quiet boy who shared her desk in the little schoolhouse. She admired his clean fingernails, and that his shoes were always tied, his knees never scraped. They played jacks after school sometimes, or marbles, but only for a few minutes because Molly always had to rush home to help her mother with supper. His name was Mark and once she offered her cheek for him to kiss when they were knelt together beside a ring drawn in the dirt, but he politely declined and in consolation gave Molly one of his marbles: green and white swirled inside clear glass, and she kept it in the trunk at the foot of her bed for years.

Shortly after she started at Woolrich Heath House as a “tweeny,” scrubbing floors and doing slop duty, she’d felt a bit moony over one of the valets, but he was a lad’s lad, smoking cigars behind the garden wall with a boy from the stables, drinking whisky from a flask he hid in his boot. Both the valet and the stableboy vanished from Woolrich Heath one day in midwinter, and the housemaids gossiped that the stable boy and—much more curiously—the young master of the house had been found in the valet’s bedroom, all three of them reeking of drink. Molly imagined they may have been playing cards; Sir detested gambling, so it was the sort of offense which might cause him to sack the boys. Whatever the reason, it also saw the young master go to the navy not long after.

Of course, Sherlock Holmes was perhaps the most handsome, terrifying man Molly had ever met. By the time she’d worked out how to manage him, though, he had become to her not unlike a bauble in a shop window that caught the eye the first morning it was displayed, but by the time one had saved up enough pennies it seemed they could be better spent elsewhere.

Mr Holmes had warned her about the florist in Paris, but he was in such a dour mood and seemed so bent on making the only trip she’d ever taken abroad into an absolute misery, Molly only half-listened to him. Of course, he’d been right to try to discourage her; French men, it turned out, were two-faced perverts who would take a lady for a stroll up and down the boulevard one afternoon, and humiliate her the following morning, with a shrug and a laugh and an arm casually draped around the shoulder of another man. Of course she had cried her heart out, but once she was back to the predictable security of home, she realized she could never have been happy in a buzzy big city like Paris and decided it had all been for the best.

Andrew was sweet, and kind, and listened to her with attentive interest, and admired her dimples when she smiled. He seemed to need a bit of looking after, and Molly enjoyed doting on him, straightening his crooked collar or stroking his hair into place when they’d come in from the breezy outdoors. Tears had sprung to her eyes that Sunday afternoon when they sat on a picnic blanket eating a meal she’d packed, and he reached into his jacket and produced a tiny velvet bag with a pearl ring inside. She’d barely let him get out the words before she said, “Yes.”

Molly knew she was taking on a demanding job as the vicar’s wife, and she did worry from time to time if she was up to the task, could withstand the scrutiny of the congregation (even though the congregation was populated with the same people she’d been seeing at church twice a week since her own christening). But when she thought of sitting down with her mending at the end of the day, with Andrew nearby in an armchair with a book and his reading glasses perched on his nose, maybe in a year or two a little one to cuddle. . .well, it was all she could imagine wanting.

*

 The ceremony was as expected, the new vicar, Will you? _I will_ , and then Miss Hooper, Will you? _I will_ ; Who giveth this woman?; Do you? _I do_ , Do you? _I do_ ; rings, a prayer, let no man put asunder. The piano was out of tune just enough that Holmes thought he might go mad from it, even pondered slipping a note into the offering basket by the sanctuary door with a note attached saying that it was meant for the hire of a piano tuner _only_. The woman who sang the Psalm had a pleasant enough voice, though, which nearly compensated.

On the church steps, the new vicar and the new Mrs Harper exchanged a kiss and were showered with rice as they went hand-in-hand up the walk and lead the wedding party and the congregation in a cheerful hubbub, reversing course along the way they had come an hour earlier.

The Colonel and Madame had come—she wore a chic cloche hat and he only snored out loud once—then kissed the bride on her cheeks, slipped the groom an envelope and excused themselves home with some excuse. It was a kindness for them not to attend the wedding breakfast that would follow; to have people of higher status than the wedding couple in attendance would have thrown off the balance, subdued the celebration and weighed upon the hostess with an imperative to cater to their needs above anyone else’s. Holmes admired their grace at having taken their leave after the church bit was through.

Once again, Holmes and Watson trailed he rest of the group, shoulder to shoulder. Holmes took a proffered cigarette from one of Molly’s uncles along the way, smoked it elegantly, though the tobacco smelled and tasted a bit stale; it was nowhere near as enjoyable as his pipe, which he looked forward to smoking after the meal.

“All your fussing about details paid off, I think,” John offered with a grin.

“Yes, well. Molly’s head was in the clouds, she’d have ended up half-dressed with her scrub brush in her hand if I’d left it all to her.”

“Oh, now,” John clucked.

“Running things is just what I do, Watson—I don’t know another way.” Holmes could hear his own voice edged with defensiveness; he’d only wanted Miss Hooper to have a nice wedding she would remember fondly. Isn’t that what women wanted from this hoopla? Well that, and to make other women envious.

“I know, I know,” John gentled. Then, in a lower voice. “I forgot to tell you how I can barely take my eyes off your perfect face.”

“Hush,” Sherlock said automatically.

“Yes, Mr Holmes,” John murmured.

After a moment, Sherlock said briskly, “Likewise, yours.”

John smiled.

Molly’s parents had begged and borrowed every table and wooden chair in carrying distance, then pushed sofas and floor lamps against the walls to accommodate the guests. The tables were dressed in white linen cloths probably made by Mrs Hooper when she had been a young bride-to-be, now softened and mildly stained over time, and here and there were set vases and bowls of flowers Watson had arranged from the gardens at Stonefield—carnations and daisies, statice and thistles, and waxy, dark green leaves. Mr Hooper welcomed the guests, toasted the wedding couple, and there began a lot of passing of trays and bowls and baskets, the fruits of Mrs Hooper’s three days’ labour. A glazed ham, aspic of lamb, asparagus with cream sauce, mountains of roasted potatoes, white bread and brown bread, and puffs of pastry filled with salmon mousse, all quite homey and made tastier by the happiness of the occasion, a day without care for work or troubles, spent in lively company. Dessert was the wedding cake, jam tarts, heart-shaped shortbread biscuits, farm cheese, and fruit. The coffee was robust and settled a room full of well-fed stomachs.

Forks rang the edges of water and wine glasses frequently and the newlyweds exchanged more kisses than could be counted, Molly’s thin smile and rosy cheeks and her new husband’s look of mischief met with cheers and laughter and sighs at their sweetness. Once every guest had a glass of champagne (a gift from the owners of Woolrich Heath House, who had likewise attended the church service and then made themselves scarce), Sherlock rose from his chair and cleared his throat.

“If I may, I’d like to offer a toast to the new couple,” he began. “It is said that Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. What a privilege for all of us to witness the marriage of such soulmates, Andrew and Molly.” He turned toward the couple, then and his face softened a bit as he looked at Molly. “My friend, Miss Hooper—now Mrs Harper, but you will forgive me if it takes me a moment to adjust,” he grinned, and there was a smattering of gentle laughter. “My friend—Molly—is a kind and generous woman, and I count it my good fortune to have known her these past seven years.”

Molly piped up, “It’s been _nine_ years.”

Sherlock leaned to the side and stage-whispered, “I was only trying to make you a bit younger, my dear.”

This drew more laughter all around. Sherlock resumed his upright posture.

“She is a pearl of a girl, Mr Harper,” he said then, addressing the new vicar, “and you are a lucky man, indeed, to share a soul with one so precious.” He turned again and raised his glass. “To Andrew and Molly—may they spend many long and happy years discovering in each other the very best pieces of themselves.”

“Here, here!” “Andrew and Molly!” “Here, here!”

*

**_Holmes in the Hall_ **

Sherlock Holmes was installed as a hall boy at Stonefield when he was only eight. His mother, always of a nervous disposition, had taken to her bed one day in October and still had not left it by Christmas. His uncle was the butler at Stonefield then, and took matters in hand, feeling his young nephew would be better looked after in “the big house.” Sherlock’s father, who was much older than his mother, had died when Sherlock was still in nappies, and the general sense was that the lack of a man’s influence was making him soft. Sherlock cried easily and often, and was the object of much taunting and shoving by other boys.

He missed his mother desperately, and three times ran away back to her one-room cottage at the edge of the estate, only to be dragged back and smacked with a strap, then smacked again for crying about it. He quickly learned to keep his mouth shut and his head down, and since there was nothing else for it but to work, he worked hard.

He grew up tall and whip-thin, and the striking Holmes bone structure carved his face into something that caught the eyes of the scullery maids and their silly friends from other houses. In his teenage years, he let them manipulate him into taking strolls with their hands tucked inside his elbow, though he found their company sorely lacking, each one sillier and stupider than the one before.

Sherlock had one friend, a pale-haired, soft-spoken boy called Victor, who was a junior footman at Pelham. They exchanged chummy letters and met on Sunday afternoons, on the pretense of going fishing at the pond between the properties, but usually only lay on their backs in the grass and smoked, and talked about whatever came to mind, or were quiet. Sometimes they dozed off, warmed by the sun, and their hands touched. It was important to Victor that one of them “be the girl” when they kissed, but Sherlock forgot the pretense as soon as their mouths came open against each other. Victor challenged Sherlock to races to see who could spend himself quicker (or, later, who could finish the other quicker), and later urged Sherlock to run away with him to London—Victor wanted a glamorous, dangerous life as an actor, or in a circus (he could juggle, but not well, and that was the extent of his talent)—but Sherlock only laughed at the idea. Later, there were indeed a few letters from London, but Victor sounded regretful and unsure in them, and eventually they stopped.

When serving as under-butler to his uncle in preparation to take over his position (by then his uncle was hunched and could barely hear), Sherlock, then in his early twenties, found himself repeatedly cornered in deserted hallways and distant rooms by the young master of the house, who was close in age to Sherlock, and who was a gruff-voiced ne’er-do-well who drank and gambled to excess. It was nothing like a romance, but there was a certain thrill to it, and Sherlock liked being handled roughly, pressed up against walls, bitten on the neck, shoved to his knees. He did not like being threatened and accused and choked and punched, but found these impossible to avoid. When a bruise was impossible to hide, he said he’d walked into a door in the dark. The war came, and the Colonel saw his opportunity to make his good-for-nothing son into something respectable. Less than a year later, the young master met his maker in a trench in Lyon.

Sherlock’s uncle finally retired when he could no longer negotiate the stairs nor hear the bells he was meant to respond to, and Sherlock—then only twenty-seven—knew he would be butler at Stonefield for the rest of his life. With absolutely no interest in marrying any of the few young women still foolish enough to express a desire to be made Mrs Holmes, Sherlock determined he would be wed to his work, and give what he had—which was nothing like love, but the best he could muster—to Stonefield Hall.

*

 The wedding couple’s honeymoon would be two nights  in Rustington in a cottage near the sand and shingle beach, and they drove off to it in a hired motorcar, Molly leaning out the window and blowing kisses to her mother and friends.

Margaret and some of the other young women pitched in with Molly’s mother to begin the enormous task of cleaning up after the wedding breakfast and putting the house right. The men shifted to the parlour with cigars, or to the garden for discussion of the summer crops and local politics. John and Sherlock set off for a stroll, back up toward the hill where the church stood.

“It was a nice speech you made,” John said admiringly.

“Thank you, John. I know I held Miss Hooper to a higher standard than she was likely capable of reaching, as regarded her work at Stonefield, but I have nearly always liked her.”

“Nearly,” John laughed.

“Yes, well.” Sherlock’s expression was one of amused embarrassment. “There are very few people of whom I am unfailingly fond.”

“Oh?” John was teasing. Sherlock was at his ease in a way John had usually only seen when the two of them were together behind the closed door of Sherlock’s little room. Molly was right, he really had been wound up this morning, clucking over the flowers and the water goblets and the quantities of mustard and cream and jam and the angle of the spoons in the sugar bowls. A well-executed affair and a few quaffs of champagne, though, had smoothed all his edges quite nicely.

“Only one, actually,” Sherlock said then, with a cheeky smile and a sideways glance.

“Do I know him?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I keep him to myself as much as possible.”

“Lucky him.” John longed to take Sherlock’s arm or even his hand as they walked. Mostly he was used to keeping their affection closely guarded, but every now and then it dug at him, like a knuckle in his spine, that he must restrain himself from expressing his ardor for the remarkable Sherlock Holmes.

“I’m the lucky one,” Sherlock corrected, and his tone had shifted from playful jesting to something bordering on serious. “At times I am given to think there is no luckier man than me in this whole world.”

“Sherlock. . .” John was touched. He marveled softly, “What a prize you are. How did I ever win you?”

Sherlock looked at the path ahead of them, smiling. “The buttonholes, mainly.”

They were cresting the hill, into the church yard, and John steered them around so they were facing out to the East, overlooking the far edges of the Briarcliff property. “Here,” he said, and at last John did take Sherlock by the elbow, and Sherlock let him. “I want to show you something.” They stood by the rear corner of the church and John pointed. “See that stand of willows there?”

“Of course.” The group of weeping willows was enormously tall and wide, comprising probably half a dozen ancient trees, their branches like ladies’ skirts brushing the ground and their silver-green leaves shimmering in the sun.

“Northwest corner.” John shifted his pointing hand. “And there, the brook.”

Sherlock’s face showed puzzlement. “Yes?” he replied with some hesitancy.

“Northern border. Now look here, closer, that bit of broken fence, you might need to squint a bit.”

“I see it,” Sherlock told him. He turned his gaze toward John. “What precisely am I looking at?”

“That fence is the southeast corner, more or less. Then over this way again—“ he pointed more to their left again. “Few hundred yards toward us below the rock wall, that’s the Southwest corner.” He met Sherlock’s eyes, and couldn’t repress his wide smile. John could feel his chest puffing up as he said, “That’s our land.”

Sherlock scanned the terrain again, a left-to-right sweep of his gaze. “Our. . .?”

“Well. It will be.” John’s heart seemed too big for his chest to contain. The look on Sherlock’s face, as the realization dawned on him, was one of the most precious, beautiful things John had ever witnessed. He went on. “That’s where I’ll build our little house, there between the willows and the brook. Flowers close to the house, fruit trees and vegetable plots down here a bit, they’ll bring the road down, and you can see the posts there and there, for electric lights,” he gestured. “It’s not much, and the soil is pretty rocky in spots—“

Sherlock cut him off. “It’s beautiful.”

They were quiet a few moments. Abruptly, Sherlock drew John by the wrists to face him, held both John’s hands in his own. “John, I want you to know. . .”

John only looked into his pale eyes made silvery by the shaded sunlight, and waited.

“I never knew love in all my life until you came into it.”

John licked his lips, smiled, stroked his thumbs along the lean lengths of Sherlock’s pinky fingers.

Sherlock swallowed and then went on in a low, serious voice. “You said once that your intention was to worship me for as long as I’ll let you—my ‘ _zealous devotee,’_ you called yourself—and every day I endeavour to be a man worthy of such a passionate pronouncement. _John_.” He paused, took a deep breath. “I want to make clear my own intentions. Toward you.”

John’s eyes felt hot and prickly and he blinked rapidly.

“Long ago I made it my life’s purpose to be devoted to my work, utterly and entirely. Because I didn’t dare dream of anything better.”

Sherlock squeezed John’s hands in his, took a half-step closer. “John Watson, you are that thing I never dared dream of, and you have my heart—utterly and entirely. All I want is to be wherever you are, every day, and every night, for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, Sherlock, you perfect beauty. . .” John breathed, and he raised their clasped hands to his mouth, pressed a kiss to the back of Sherlock’s hand.

“Please tell me you’ll have me,” Sherlock finished.

“I will. Of course I will.”

And heedless of anyone who may have happened upon them standing almost entirely in the open beside the church, John slipped one hand behind the small of Sherlock’s back, and the other behind his head, piecing apart his waves of silky hair with rough fingers, and pulled Sherlock into a tender kiss, relishing the way their lips nested perfectly together as though designed for the purpose: conveying comfort, and passion, and tenderness, and all the sweet promises of a lifetime. More precise, more elegant, more expansive than words could be, the gentle pressure and pull of their lips and tongue-tips and shared breath had always spoken more profoundly of their bond than anything either of them had ever whispered or murmured or moaned against the other’s ear. In that moment of Sherlock’s professing his devotion, theirs was a kiss to seal a promise.

They drew back a bit, and Sherlock rested his forehead on John’s, and his eyes glittered and glistened, and his mouth bowed up at the corners.

“Let me go on giving you everything I have,” John whispered urgently, still holding the back of Sherlock’s long, graceful neck in the palm of his hand, “Let me make a home for you,” Sherlock nodded against John’s forehead, clutched at the sleeves of John’s coat. “Let me love you madly, passionately, _inside-out_ , just every way there is. . .” they both let go quick laughs at John’s momentary inelegance and Sherlock went on nodding. “Let me make you understand what a treasure you are to me.” John kissed the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “At least let me try.” Tears shimmered in his eyes, and he petted Sherlock’s long arm until he found the slender wrist, the long palm, tangled up his fingers in Sherlock’s trembling ones. “Sherlock, will you let me try?”

“I will,” Sherlock whispered, and his voice broke. “Yes. I will, I will.”

*

**_Watson at War_ **

John had loved his wife. She was sweet and she had a lovely singing voice she indulged while she worked—kneading dough for bread or sewing the fallen buttons back onto John’s shirts. She’d looked at him in a way that no other person in his life had looked at him; she admired him. And he tried to love her in a way that let him live up to that starry-eyed gaze, though he knew he constantly fell short of it. She wept so hard when their infant son died that he was afraid she would fly apart, and John held her close and rocked her against his chest and it was the first time in his life he felt useful, and like he was good at something. He cried when he buried her; she deserved so much more than she had gotten.

It was while he was away from her, during the war, in a damned rain-filled trench in some godforsaken barren French farmland, that John realized why he would never be able to love her the right way, that he was never meant to be a husband to any woman. William Campbell was a blond-haired lieutenant with a tight-lipped smile and creases that formed down the sides of his strong, square chin—not dimples really, more parentheses than commas. He was funny and sarcastic but never cruel, with deadpan humour that lifted mens’ spirits even as their feet rotted in their soaking boots.

They’d had a leave together—just three days, and with only enough money in their pockets for one room, one bottle, and one prostitute. They’d left aside the company of a lady in favour of a second bottle, with a little left over to buy a shower and pay a barber to shave them. Feeling like human beings for the first time in months, John and Will ate themselves nearly sick on sausages and sweets, then retired to the room they’d let in the back of a flophouse full of endless shouting—in ecstasy or fury, sometimes both kinds at once, from different rooms.

They’d drunk half a bottle when Will put his hand on John’s knee, there side-by-side on one of the two narrow beds, and confessed something John had never thought one man could confess to another but which unhitched some tight thing deep in his chest so that suddenly he could breathe better. He wondered if his smile would crack his face apart, and when Will raised his unruly, pyramid-shaped eyebrows expectantly, John kissed him, and it was a kiss of sheer joy, unlike any kiss he’d ever given or received before. They didn’t leave the room again until it was time to report back to the front.

If any of their fellows noticed their flirtation or their new bond, they kept mum about it. There were so many more pressing, potentially deadly things to worry about; every breakfast truce ended in machine gun fire, or a sniper taking a man’s head off while his own rifle was in pieces as he cleaned and oiled it.

It was afternoon, nearly dusk, and suddenly there came a truly impressive rumble of rolling thunder, only it wasn’t thunder, it was boots. Men came raining down, blazing gun-muzzles and heavy feet first, straight down on top of them. Chaos.  Shouting, weapons fire, a grenade, then shrieking, and the hot-copper stink of blood that went up the nose and couldn’t be got rid of. There weren’t many of them, and they were summarily dispatched, tossed out into No Man’s Land to be claimed after dark by the enemy’s medics. John was hit, called out for help, but dear god, nevermind him, because Will was in _pieces_ , legs gone, right arm gone, chest wide open, eyes—thank god for it—closed, forever closed, and John was gasping for breath as they strapped him to a stretcher and started to run, every step jolting agony through his shoulder and arm and chest. He shouted and shouted for Will until he was hoarse and breathless and his vision faded to a pinprick, and then to dark.

Back home with Jane, he went through the motions, smiled and was grateful and loved her, he _did_ , he _really did_. But not in the way he now knew he could love, in the way he was certain he would never have a chance to love again.

*

John and Sherlock stood there embracing, nuzzling, murmuring, until John let go a laugh to crack the edge of seriousness and said, “I think the champagne went to your head a bit,” and Sherlock smiled and kissed John’s closed eye one last time before breaking them apart.

“Maybe so,” he allowed with a half-smile. He fished for his pocket watch and flipped it open. “We should get back. We’ll need to be on our way shortly, to be back at Stonefield for supper.”

They took a last look at the plot of land, and Sherlock lit a final borrowed cigarette to smoke as they walked back to the Hoopers’ tidy little house.

Much later, after they’d shared laughter and fond memories of Miss Hooper with the rest of the servants over a cold supper of sandwiches and the last of the previous autumn’s pears from the cellar, when they’d gone through the usual ritual of Holmes asking Watson to join him in his room for a glass of port and locked themselves together in his little room, Sherlock and John lay together in bed, shoulder to shoulder and face to face, nuzzling, nipping, sweating, breathless, with one of Sherlock’s hands encircling them both, Sherlock’s leg wrapped around John’s thigh, holding him down, pulling him close. Sherlock whined and gasped as John worked fingers inside him, intently watching the changes this brought to Sherlock’s expression. “Oh, you precious thing,” John whispered against Sherlock’s kiss-stung lip, “You angel, my god, who made you? Every bit of you perfect. . .” and Sherlock sucked in air like a drowning man, and his lids fluttered over eyes gone dark and wide with desire, and he spent himself between their bodies with a great shudder, a series of smaller shivers trailing in its wake.

“ _John!_ ” Sherlock gasped around it and never had John’s plain name sounded so like something sacred, so like a promise, so like a prayer.

Sherlock steadied himself with a quiet groan, brought his face close to John’s again, opened his lips to twine his tongue into John’s mouth, stroking messy fingers in firm rhythm as he kissed deeply, soulfully, humming quietly the delight he took in his lover’s body. John gripped Sherlock’s hip hard with clawing fingertips, murmured encouragements, and all at once turned his head to muffle a shout against the pillow as Sherlock finished him with a lazy, satisfied smile spreading across his perfect mouth.

 John raked his fingers through Sherlock’s hair and traced his eyebrows with the tip of one finger. Sherlock’s eyelids and limbs were becoming heavy, and he stroked John’s shin with his long, dexterous toes.

“John, there’s something I forgot to say,” Sherlock intoned, “Earlier today. And—if I’m being honest—every day since we met.”

“Mm?” John dragged the tip of his nose upward along Sherlock’s cheek.

Sherlock drew John’s hand to his mouth and kissed his fingertips. “Only that I love you.”

John sighed, long and low, and his eyes fell closed. “And it is my pleasure and privilege to love you in return,” he whispered, and pressed a soft flurry of kisses onto Sherlock’s ripe, pink lips. “My own. . . _my own_. . .My own Sherlock Holmes.”

 

 

-END-

 

_Here you can see the inspiration for[Molly's wedding dress](http://www.vintagetextile.com/new_page_201.htm)._

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr!
> 
> fuckyeahfightlock.tumblr.com is the main one, and poppyalexander-fic.tumblr.com will get you the messy side of my fan-brain.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] I Will, I Will](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5191652) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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